On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

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Sunday, December 31, 1995

1995 World Fantasy Award Nominees

Location: World Fantasy Convention, Baltimore, Maryland.

Comments: In 1995 the World Fantasy Awards finally got around to giving Ursula K. Le Guin a Lifetime Achievement Award. The only trouble is that this award seems to have been bestowed at least ten years too late. Le Guin published her Earthsea trilogy between 1968 and 1972. She published The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and The Lathe of Heaven in 1971. The Wind's Twelve Quarters came out in 1975, Orsinian Tales in 1976, and The Eye of the Heron in 1978. And yet the World Fantasy Awards spent the 1980s handing out Lifetime Achievement Awards to guys whose accomplishments were for the most part, at best equal to hers, and in some cases, clearly inferior. Even in 1984, when a pile of Lifetime Achievement awards were handed out to a collection of male authors, Le Guin was passed over.

One can take some comfort in the fact that by 1995 the World Fantasy Awards were getting better with respect to gender equity as evidenced by Le Guin's Lifetime Achievement Award and Elizabeth Hand's Best Novella win and Best Novel nomination, but there was still a lot of ground to make up, and a long way to go before the blatant sexism of the 1970s era would be offset.

Other Nominees:Brittle Innings by Michael BishopThe Circus of the Earth and the Air by Brooke StevensFrom the Teeth of Angels by Jonathan CarrollLove & Sleep by John CrowleyWaking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand

Other Nominees:Fee by Peter StraubThe God Who Slept With Women by Brian W. AldissThe Last Time by Lucius ShepardOut of the Night, When the Full Moon Is Bright . . . by Kim NewmanA Slow Red Whisper of Sand by Robert Devereaux

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